Air-conditioned mattress



March 1, 1949. H. P. MADDlsoN 2,462,984

\ AIR CONDITIONED MATTRESS Filed Oct. 27, 19 2 Sheets-Sheet l` if? 1 9- Z1 f INVENTOR.

HORACE P MADDSON BY JIQCLQQ.

A ATTORNEY March 1, 1949. H. P. MADDlsoN 2,462,984

AIR coNDITIoNED MATTRESS Filed Oct. 2'7, 1944 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 l INVENToR.

HORACE P. MAnDlsoN BY ffm/z 8MM ATTORNEY Patented Mar. 1, 1949 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE AIR-CONDITIONED MATTRESS Horace P. Maddison, Portland, Oreg.

Application October 27, 1944, Serial No. 560,683

This invention relates to an air conditioned mattress, the words air conditioned meaning, as they do in the air conditioning art, an artificial condition of air with respect to .temperature and sometimes humidity.

An object of the invention is to make articial temperatures available to the occupants of hospitals, particularly in the wards of such institutions where adjoining beds may require different conditions for their occupants. It is at once available to furnish the occupant of a bed, equipped with this invention, with an articial body temperature, either al1 over the whole body or embracing a selected bodily area, considerably above or markedly below that of the air which he breathes directly from the room.

It is a still further object to furnish a cool temperature of the nature of an ice-pack for a local area of a persons body, or for other conditions to furnish the equivalent of hot applications, and in neither case, as will be apparent, to require anything like the close nursing attendance as by the old way of doing it.

It is also apparent that with an air conditioned mattress, anyone, whether ill or not, may have an artificial and more comfortable resting temperature produced by a relatively small apparatus, when to recondition the air of a large room or perhaps a tent will be impossible, wasteful or ineffective. By conditioned is meant made suitable, such as warmed, cooled, humidified, ltered, or the like.

The objects stated are satised by the structure illustrated in the accompanying drawings, which are diagrammatic to the extent that porous surfaces that are so because of a large number of air passageway holes therethrough, have only a few holes shown, as repeating them would not'l serve to make the disclosure any clearer.

In the drawings:

Fig. 1 is a plan view of a mattress, with parts removed, equipped with an air permeable top, of which a selected area may be left air permeable, or in so'me cases more than one area, the balance of the top being sealed off from the artificially tempered air as will be explained;

Fig. 2 is an enlarged elevation of a corner of Fig. 1 shown partly sectioned;

Fig. 3 is a perspective view of the mattress of the invention with the tempered air localizing means removed and the top foramlnous cover not shown; and

Fig. 4 is an enlarged partly sectioned view of the corner portion of Fig. 3.

Further describing the drawings, the mattress 5 Claims. (Cl. 5-347) will have a substantially airtight bottom member, to be generally flexible. The sides 2 will also be impervious to air under the pressures contemplated herein as will, preferably, be a marginal area such as 3 all around the upper or top area. Inside of this last named area will be a foraminous sheet or top securely attached to the inner boundaries of the elements 3, and identified by numeral 4. Where this element shows through a hole in I0 and II, it is given the identifying numeral 4'. For convenience, a bead 5 will surround the upper boundary of the mattress and for appearances sake, another bead is shown around the bottom surface boundary.

There are several flexible plastics available that are very tough, will stand perforation by hollow rics and are in general very suitable for bottom, top or side of the mattress of the invention.

Internally, the mattress will be divided into two parts, an upper part comprisinga resilient cushion portion Byieeath which fis` a strong porous support sheet A wide choice of cushion material that is stis ning and highly air permeable is available. A rubberized fiber such as that now used as pilot seats in airplanes is highly desirable. The cushion and the support sheet` will be supported on the bottom I by an assembly of coil springs as shown at 9 and the balance of the space between the support sheet 8 and the bottom I serves as air pressure equalizing space, which must be proportionately large to get even distribution of conditioned air Y 4, which is a prime requisite.

plastic which is much tougher and stronger than most fabrics is suggested. These strips are crosswise strips such as I0, which lie side by side and cover the whole area of the sheet 4', and superposed on these crosswise strips Ill will be longitudinal strips II. Each crosswise strip I0 and each lengthwise strip II is independently movable and each is provided with a desirable number of holes, and when the longitudinal strips and the cross strips are all in the same portion, that is, when uniformly pulled to a predetermined bead 5, both sets of holes are in registry and permit conditioned air to pass through from the inner parts of the mattress. Each strip, Il) or I I, is furnished with a handle as diagrammatically shown at I2 and I5, preferably so placed and formed that it s serves also as a limit stop, as shown in Fig. l. It is not intended New to indicate dinerence in structure by different numerals, I2 and I5. l

For example, let it be assumed that when all o the handles I2 which serve to move the cross strips l lie close to the bead, as shown in the top `of Fig. 1 (except one) and the handles I3, which control the longitudinal strips Il likewise lie close to the bead, all of the holes are out of registry and no substantial quantity of air can pass through from the inside of the mattress since quite low air pressures will be necessary. Contrariwise, when all of the handles on the opposite end and side (which will be deemed present though not drawn) are pulled, all of the holes in both strips will be in registry and the capacity of the mattress top to emit conditioned air Will be undiminished by the strips. When handles further identified as a and b have been pulled, the hole marked c will -be open clearthrough and a local area can emit air that is entirely different in quality from the rest of the mattress top. It is at once seen that these strips must be punched so that spaces or lands between holes are slightly greater in their smallest dimension than the diameter of the holes and that it is only necessary to move the handles l5 about the width of the holes to open or close the latter for a very wide selection of active or inactive areas. Conditioned air will be furnished to the mattress by a machine controllable to produce the required temperature and these are so well known that it has not been thought necessary to indicate more than a conduit such as 20, which will in each case be presumed to form a connection with the necessary air moving equipment to furnish heated or cooled air as required. y WW The foregoing described structure will satisfy the objects of the invention in a satisfactory manner, which is largely made possible by new materials not heretofore available, but which were developed for widely divergent purposes.

Having fully described my invention, what I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent, is:

l. An air conditioning mattress comprising a mattress having a space therein that is substantially co-extensive with the top area of the mattress, an air permeable top area of said mattress, means for supplying conditioned air to the interior of the mattress and means superposed on the permeable top which are selectively movable to open less than the whole area of the top to air emission from the mattress interior while closing the remainder of said area.

2. A mattress having dense walled bottom and side and end vertical walls, with a porous top member, a spring supported cushion defining an inner enclosed space above the bottom, an air supply means connected to the space thus provided and two sets of movable slide strips, each set comprising a plurality of side by side perforated material, one set normal to the other set and superposed in contact therewith, characterized by the strips of each set being independently movable to bring the perforations thereof into or out of registry with the perforations of the immediately adjacent set, to pass air from said supply means through a selected area of the top of the mattress.

3. The combination as claimed in claim 2 and including limit stop meanson each strip, at each end thereof, effective to determine its position with respect to registry of perforations.

4. The combination as claimed in claim 2 and including means movable according to a denite mode of operation to leave a selected area of the top of the mattress air permeable to emit conditioned air from the mattress interior, While at the same time shutting off all other areas.

5. A mattress comprising a body with substantially air impermeable bottom, sides, ends and a margin around the top surface thereof to define an inner rectangular area generally lled with porous resilient material, a porous cover made rigid with the said margin to close the top, a plurality of perforated cross strips and a plurality of perforated longitudinal strips, one sort superposed on the other, positioned between the porous cover and the resilient material, the said strips longitudinally shiftable to bring the perforations into registry under the whole or a part only of said porous cover and means for admitting air under pressure beneath the strips.

HORACEA P. MADDISON.

REFERENCES CITED The following references are of record in the file of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 560,613 Forsberg May 19, 1896 597,058 Forsberg Jan. 11, 1898 1,489,308 Cox Apr. 8, 1924 1,936,960 Bowman Nov. 28, 1933 2,059,226 Gates Nov.y 3, 1936 FOREIGN PATENTS Number Country Date 75,885 Germany June 23, 1894 249,760 Great Britain Apr. 1, 1926 429,326 France July 13, 1911 

